Chapter 7
Rosabel La Rouge
Present day
If you’re ever alone or in need of something, anything at all, go to the blue house behind the hill. I’ll find you there eventually.
That’s what he told me once when things were…different. When everything was different.
And that’s what I was thinking about when Michael found me.
“La Rouge, you’re early.”
I was on my way out of the dressing room to go grab a bite. Not that I was hungry—far from it—but it was already nine a.m. I’d showered and put on my uniform, and the siren had revealed where she’d hidden her treasures to me after another two hours of playing her games. I was weak. My body was protesting. I needed food whether I liked the idea of eating right now or not .
Michael was right there in the hallway as soon as I walked out. He was my team leader, possibly the most positive guy I’d ever met in my whole life. He smiled at ungodly hours, and it was mostly genuine. It freaked me out, especially when he constantly tried to get me to smile, too.
“Hey, Michael. You, too.” Our shift didn’t start until ten this week.
“I got a call twenty minutes ago. I was just gonna text all of you to come in right away,” he said, waving at the door opposite ours—men’s dressing room. “Glad I caught you. Let’s meet in the main room in fifteen.”
“Why?” I wondered. “What happened?”
“I haven’t looked at the file yet.” He pushed the door of the dressing room open and stopped to look back at me. “I think a group of catfairies has been spotted near Back River. Looks like they’ve basically infested an entire woods in the past three weeks.”
I did a double take. “ Three weeks?” That was a long time for creatures like catfairies to go unnoticed. Their name might have sounded cute, but they were anything but. Very dangerous animals who could cause a lot of death. Very bloodthirsty for humans.
“Yep—but it’s nothing to worry about,” said Michael, scratching the back of his head as he smiled awkwardly, ruffling his sandy blond hair even more. He never really cared much about his appearance, but his shirt was ironed today. “We’ll, uh…we’ll talk more during briefing. Buh-bye.” And he basically slammed the door shut in my face.
Huh. That was strange. Very unlike Michael. That smile just now was awkward as all hell—definitely not genuine. I didn’t think I’d ever seen Michael so nervous before.
And I thought that was going to distract me. I thought I was going to be able to eat a little bit, at least, until the rest of the team came in and he briefed us on those catfairies.
I was wrong.
I’d just gone into the cafeteria and looked at the tray of fresh croissants that someone from the kitchen had brought in. I just looked at them, and my body reacted like I was in front of the most disgusting thing to have ever existed.
This time it was so fucking violent that I had no choice but to run to the restrooms, barely make it into one of the stalls, and I threw up like I’d eaten nonstop for days.
Fuck, it felt awful, but so relieving at the same time.
When nothing came out of me anymore, I sat down on the cold tiles, wiped my face with toilet paper, and I breathed.
I was always good at talking to myself, getting through to me. I was always good at stopping whatever train of thought was taking over my mind at any given moment. I’d just stop it . Put a stone wall in front of it. Make it disappear. Easy .
Except today, it wasn’t working. Today, the train was way too powerful, all-consuming, and it broke through whatever stone walls or blocks I put in its way. I’d thought about it every second of interrogating that siren until she gave me all the information Cassie needed. I’d thought about it every second of showering, drying my hair, putting my clothes on. I’d thought about it while throwing my guts out in this very toilet, and I was thinking about thinking about it right now, too. Too powerful.
He was too present in my mind. I couldn’t make him disappear—and unfortunately for me, it wasn’t just the fear talking.
“ I’m okay, ” I whispered to myself, hoping the sound of my voice would make me believe my own bullshit. It didn’t, but I still tried.
And I reminded myself that he would be okay, too.
Taland knew that the IDD would have their best on him already, so he was going to steer clear of the entire city, not just the Headquarters. He was not going to get killed because he wasn’t coming to kill me. It wasn’t going to happen—he was too smart for that.
“So, there,” I told myself. There was no need to freak out. If he was smart enough to escape the Tomb, simply disappear into a wall, he was smart enough not to get caught, even if Wayne O’Bryan was after him. By now he was probably out of Maryland completely—out of the States. He wasn’t going to find me, and Wayne wasn’t going to find him.
That’s all I needed to think about.
Of course, I was still aware that it was bullshit, but for a little while, I clung to it. For a little while, it helped me get up from the stall, get my shit together, and make it all the way to the main meeting room before fifteen minutes were over.
The problem was, there seemed to be some sort of a mistake because agents from other teams were already there, waiting.
Main room, Michael said. I was sure I’d heard him right. So then…
“What in the fuck is this shit?”
I turned to look at Erid coming through the door, looking at the agents sitting around the big table while she chewed her gum, and last night’s eyeliner was smeared all around her eyes to give it a perfect smokey look I could never quite recreate deliberately.
“Michael said to meet him here,” I said. Even though she wasn’t looking at me, we were on Michael’s team together, and she only ever talked to us. “But apparently other people are already using this room.”
“He told me to meet him here, too,” Erid said. “Something about catfairies. Fucker woke me up early for it.”
“It’s the catfairies,” one of the agents sitting at the table told me. Fernand was his name and he’d been here less than a year. We’d smiled at each other in the cafeteria once or twice.
“Yes, dipshit, that’s what I said,” Erid snapped at him.
“No, I mean we’re all here for the catfairies,” the guy said, cheeks already flushed a bright crimson.
Erid and I exchanged a look. Her black brows were raised to the middle of her forehead. Her dyed platinum-white hair was all over the place, and her shirt was the same one she’d had on the day before. I could tell by the coffee stain over her right boob that she’d cursed about for at least a full minute.
“C’mon, let’s go sit down” I said, nodding at the nearest empty chairs close to the end of the room. “Thanks, Fernand.”
“No problem, Rosabel.”
“You believe that guy?” Erid said when we sat down, and she eyed every person sitting around us like they were insects. Nothing personal—just the way she was. She looked at me like I was an insect, too, that first week I joined their team. She talked like she hated everything that was ever created, but she was a sweetheart when it counted. A sweetheart with a very filthy mouth.
“Why would he lie?” I muttered, as the others slowly started to throw looks at Erid, too. She didn’t care—if anything, she thrived when people hated her. Her personality was very…colorful, even though she was Whitefire. She could ki ll you fifty different ways with her little daggers, too.
“Because people are liars?” she offered with a shrug.
“He’s not lying,” said a guy from across the table—Ryan Chase who used to work in Finance, then somehow made his way into the Law Enforcement Division and became an agent. Unheard of, Michael told us, but he was still pretty good at kicking ass.
We all were, I guess. It’s the reason why we were part of the nineteen agent crews of the Maryland IDD.
“Jessica said they have the highest number of catfairies ever recorded near Back River. A team won’t cut it—they’re sending in all of us,” said Abigail from three seats down. I knew her too, had exchanged a hi here and there, just like with most of them. Jessica was her team leader, a ruthless Redfire my grandmother adored. The teams were very clearly separated—each leader got four to five agents, depending on how much work was entrusted to them or how long they were with the IDD. We stayed out of each other’s business, very rarely shared information on cases, and we almost never cooperated like this.
“All of us for some fucking catfairies? Since when did the IDD become such little bitches?” Erid wondered—genuinely.
“Erid,” I said, though I was wasting breath.
“No, I’m serious. Just let me go on my own and I’ll take care of them. Give me a day and a lot of daggers. I’ll bring back all their heads.” Again—she absolutely meant it.
“You realize we’re all capable of killing catfairies, right?” said Ryan, raising his chin so he could look down at Erid. “And they know it, too.” He nodded his head behind to the wall made of windows that showed the offices (which were basically cubicles, only more spacious ones) of our division. “So, there’s a reason why they brought all of us here like this.”
“And awful timing, too!” said Abigail. “The Iris Roe is in three days. We should be out there making sure the numbers stay down.”
We all knew which numbers she referred to— death numbers.
“Yeah, good luck with that,” said another agent—Celia was her name, a Blackfire, and she was the second youngest agent of the IDD after me. “Those numbers will keep on climbing this year, like they do every year. Last time they had a death rate of sixty percent.” She let that sink in for a moment. “That’s right—sixty percent of over two-hundred players died in the game, and that’s not including teams or staff or audience.”
Shivers ran down my back. Holy shit, that was insane.
“I don’t understand why they don’t shut down that game,” Fernand said, shaking his head. “Or why anybody would want to be a part of it.”
I really didn’t get that, either. Who would be so stupid as to choose death of their own free will by engaging in a deadly trap they called a game ?
“Hmm. Maybe because they’re not a bunch of sissies, and they want to get rich or die trying?” Erid shrugged again.
“Then maybe you should join them—you know, since you’re not a sissy ,” Ryan told her through gritted teeth, and I was going to slam my foot onto Erid’s to stop her from replying, but the door to the meeting room opened, and thank Iris it did.
Erid had started smiling the way she did when she was a couple of minutes away from throwing her daggers, and Ryan was not going to stand by and let her hurt him, and we really didn’t need a fight to break out right now.
Luckily, Michael came into the room first, followed by Jessica Patterson, Eric Haines, and Lauren Stephan—the team leaders. None of them looked to be in a particularly good mood, and Michael’s smile was still just as nervous as it had been earlier.
They came around the table to the front of the room, and they confirmed exactly what the others told us. A group of almost fifty catfairies, grown more than usual because they’d lived and fed regularly for weeks before anybody realized they were there, had infested a rather big portion of a forest right off Back River just outside Baltimore, and we needed to take them down asap.
They’d already sent drones, and two ward teams had locked in the place tightly so at least the catfairies wouldn’t be able to run away for the rest of the day. But a team of agents was also sent in early in the morning, and the IDD had lost contact with them ten minutes in.
“This is what we have,” Lauren Stephan said, as she turned the remote to the projector hanging on the ceiling. The picture appeared on the white wall at her back. “Ralf confirmed entrance in the woods at seven-oh-eight this morning. Ten minutes later, we lost all communication with him and his team.”
Goose bumps covered my arms when I took in the image that was showing on the wall. The colors were bright and vivid enough—the projector was magically enhanced—that I recognized the boot, the helmet, and?—
“Is that an arm?” said someone from the other teams—I didn’t care to look who.
“Damn right, it is,” said Erid with a whistle. “These catfairies mean business.” And she sounded thrilled about it, too.
“This is very out of character,” I said before I could help myself, but the sight of a cut off arm bleeding all over the grass at the edge of the river took my mind off what I usually did when in meetings.
That—and now I was pretty sure there was a foot inside that boot near the tree, and potentially a head in that helmet we barely saw from the grass.
“It is, indeed,” Eric Haines said with a forced smile. “Look at this. Can you see it?”
He turned and pressed his finger to the wall, near a large tree that had eyes.
Fuck.
My heart jumped, and most sucked in breaths when they realized that it wasn’t a large tree at all, but a catfairie hidden behind a normal sized one. Holy shit, he was massive . I’d dealt with catfairies before. They grew the size of dwarves, barely three feet tall, but this one shown in this picture was at least seven feet, and it was big.
The reason why they were called catfairies was very simple—because they were fairies who looked like cats. They stood on two legs, had paws for hands and feet, had big eyes with vertical slits and pointy ears identical to cats. Their whiskers were smaller, though, and that’s where their similarities ended. Their bodies were built like people’s—except the paws—and they had fur in the same areas we did. It was silver, like greyed hair, and the color of their eyes was a striking cobalt blue. Fairies existed among us in different forms, though most species were extinct already. The IDD didn’t have a very clear idea where exactly they came from, if they were native to our dimension or not, but because of the type of magic they possessed—illusions and hallucinations so powerful very few could withstand it if they got their claws into you—they were classified as fairies. Sirens were considered water fairies, too, their compulsion magic as dangerous as the magic of these fairies, which made dreams seem real. Turned them into nightmares. They could warp reality for you in whichever way they wanted.
And that’s why they were so deadly, and why we hunted them down whenever we found groups of more than five or six at a time.
“That’s right—it’s an almost seven-foot tall catfairie,” Jessica continued. “The tallest we have on record is five foot seven, which tells us that these have been feeding off people’s minds and dreams for quite some time now.”
“Then what the hell are we waiting for? Take us there so we can cut off their heads,” Erid said, and some of the agents murmured their agreement.
“Erid, we’re not done yet,” said Michael, just as the door opened and the twins walked in with sunglasses covering half their faces.
Jim and Jam, the rest of our team.
Of course, those weren’t their real names. One was Andre and the other Andrew, but they never told us which was which, and they insisted on being called Jim and Jam when they were working.
They were also very much alcoholics, though they’d never admit it to anyone, and they somehow managed to fool every single test, magical or human, whenever Michael ordered them based on the obvious—we could see how drunk they still were as they stumbled into the room, muttering sorry, excuse me as they slammed into people’s chairs, until they finally made it to two empty ones and sat down.
“Morning, boys. Glad you could join us,” Michael said through gritted teeth. Not a man who got mad often, but the twins always got to him. Couldn’t blame him—I’d have kicked them out of the IDD, too, if they weren’t so good at what they did. They were both Greenfire mages, and they were the best at freezing time. So, Michael—and the IDD—had to put up with their tardiness and the fact that they showed up drunk at work every other day or so.
“As we were saying,” Eric said, and he and the other leaders were all giving Michael the look , which also got to him just as much as the twins did. They judged him openly for not having better control of his team, while poor Michael had tried every possible way to get through to the twins without success. Now, he just turned his head to the projected image and continued to speak as if nothing had happened.
“Right, Eric. This is the biggest catfairie ever recorded, and we suspect the rest of them are close to the same size,” Michael said.
“We’re not entirely sure how immune they are to our spells, which is why our teams will be divided into two. Jessica’s and my team will leave in fifteen minutes, while the rest of you remain on standby,” Eric said.
“But wouldn’t it be wiser for all of us to go in at once?” Erid said, and I happened to agree with her, too.
“Like we said, we don’t know what the inside of that forest looks like at the moment. We have no communication with Ralf’s team and the drones aren’t able to pick up much footage from the canopy. They’re staying out of sight,” Lauren said, and you could just tell how afraid she was by the look in her eyes and her pressed lips. She was Blackfire, very powerful, and I heard she’d never missed a shot in her life, but this made her nervous anyway .
Which was why it made me nervous, too.
“What if they’re all dead?” said one of the agents from the front of the table—Layla was her name.
“Possible, but unlikely. Ralf’s team are very good fighters, just like the rest of us,” Eric said with a nod. “They’re there—we just can’t reach them.”
The problem was, I could smell his bullshit from all the way across the room, and I wasn’t even trying very hard to analyze him.
Ralf’s team was already dead, and I suspected he and the rest of the leaders knew it. They just didn’t want us to get discouraged, so they were lying about it.
Fear was like a sack of rocks falling in the pit of my stomach—this one different from the one I’d had all morning. This one came from a very different place—the eyes of that creature that looked like it shouldn’t exist in our world at all. And it came from that boot and that helmet, that arm torn off a torso that was bleeding all over the grass by the dark, murky water of the river.
Iris help me, I was thankful for it. It was a distraction unlike any other—even the siren hadn’t kept all my senses busy the way this was doing. So, after they told us the plan and pointed out on the map which team would take which part of the woods, we were dismissed to go prepare and rest and report to Transportation so that we were ready to go whenever we received their call.
Even Erid had nothing to say for a long time while we put on all our gear and sheathed our blades and holstered our guns. I had my ring on my finger just like always, and I was ready to leave within ten minutes.
Instead, we were made to wait for almost four whole hours.